In a place just like this

It is a cold night tonight. It's probably 20 degrees. But at least there is no wind. I've said it before, but that wind comes down from Siberia and it will chill you to the bone. There is nothing colder.

It is late when I leave my friend's house on the other side of town. I am tired and my head hurts and I briefly consider taking a taxi. It would only be 3,000won and would cut 18 minutes or so off my journey, but I opt to walk. The biting cold is what I need to wake me up; to put some feeling back into my mind and my body.

I walk, headphones on, only partially recognizing what I pass. I have passed these things so many times they have ceased to be foreign or novel, they are just life. After all, the end of novelty is the start of reality. I forget that I am in a foreign country that I am doing something abnormal that I am not back in Michigan. I forget these things often.

The things you see when you walk late at night here are more unique than my circumstances. Drunk friends stumbling in the street, arguing loudly and helping each other along, a husband and wife in the midst of a verbal altercation about to turn physical, a lone elderly woman pushing a baby stroller full of dismantled cardboard boxes and sobbing LOUDLY after passing me...these things are just images and sounds, isolated from my existence. I see them, but I don't truly experience them. I am walking, unmolested and unreal, home.

A police car passes, sirens silently flashing but no sound to remind one it is there.

Many of the buildings are unlit and closed, strange for this city, but perhaps not strange for a Sunday night. Even the popular 24 hour barbecue restaurant is completely empty, a feat I'm not sure I've ever witnessed. I cross the large street at the crosswalk, but it is unnecessary: in the middle of the road I pause to see that no cars are to be found in either direction on the 6 lane road. I am alone.

Coming nearer to my house, the isolation I feel is striking. I can't hear anything with my headphones on and I barely sense that I am coming upon the scene of accident. I am utterly surprised to see a car, headlights glaring, stopped in the middle of a roundabout very near my house. I suppress the natural curiosity that surrounds events like these and continue my walk, stoically. It is then that I notice there is a victim, lying on the ground. Police are scampering and random people are milling about. There is much shouting in Korean and then I hear it. Someone is speaking English.

I am too shocked to react. Who is that? What are they doing here? They sound in trouble. In a quick moment of horror, I realize the person lying on the ground is shouting in English.

As I near the scene, the police take notice of me and begin approaching me. They call to me in Korean, but I am too confused to reply. The man in the road has now noticed me and he calls to me too, in English.

"Sir, please come here. I can't explain to them what has happened. I need your help."

The word echoes in my brain. Help.

The police and man are staring at me as I continue to walk around them. I can see my home, my bed, my warm floor, all within close proximity. The man is still calling to me. His eyes are begging me to help him. I cannot forget those eyes.

Adjusting the headphone in my ear, I continue walking past the commotion towards my house, not looking back. Tonight, it is only sleep that I need.

So, you're 19 then?

This Sunday, I found myself at a small mallish sort of thing with a couple of friends. Entering the fourth floor, which was reserved for men's clothes, we scuttled around not finding much. Passing a booth, we remarked on the beauty of the woman working there. In a few minutes, we found ourselves back at this store and buying clothes. I was conscious of a certain flirtation with this woman. She touched my arm and remarked about my Korean, sense of humor and in what was perhaps an attempt at encouraging jealousy, Micah's good style. Nonetheless, I felt a certain something. Micah and Richard started to go down the escalator after our purchases were made and I felt that classic feeling:
"This girl is attractive. Do something."
"I can't do anything. What do I ever do?"
"This should be different. Say something."
"I am not outgoing with the opposite sex. Don't do anything and regret it for the next 2 hours."
And then I thought of my friend Josh.

Josh approaches members of the opposite sex without hesitation. I want to be like him. On Sunday, I was.

Richard and Micah embarked on the escalator and I said, "Hold on, I'll be there in a moment."

Me: "You speak English well."
Her: "Oh, thanks." (awkward pause)
Me: "Where did you learn?"
Her: "I just studied in high school."
Me: "Well, I study Korean. We could help each other."
Her: "That's a good idea."
Me: " Okay, let me get your number."
Score (I think).

Fast foward to last night. After some text messages, I have a date with this mysterious girl. I can't remember what she looked like, all I remember is that she was incredibly beautiful and Richard kept whispering in my ear, "Oh my god she's so hot." As if she didn't understand English.

We head to a coffee shop and it becomes apparent she actually wants me to help her with her English. Well, that could change I think. After about 10 minutes, I discover she's a freshman in college. To be exact, she's 19 years old. She is majoring in jewelry design. I am editing a speech she's writing to introduce herself. Her teacher has told her to be confident and immodest. She is far from humble as a result.

I look at the rings she wears and point out one that has a sort of combination look looking thing on it. She says she likes rings a lot because she's so into jewelry. I ask what the numbers mean. She says they are her boyfriend's birthday.

Fantastic. Great. Why am I actually pursuing a 19 year old anyway? Am I pursuing one, let alone one in a relationship in her first year of college with nothing in common with me?

But the point stands, I asked her for her number. This is not minor. This is exceptional. She is incredibly beautiful, but not a match for me in any sense of the word.

If I were a body of water, I would be a small stream or a puddle at best.

The city

The city is a massive stretch of lights from a distance. Through the steamed-up window of the bus, you can see the lights stretching as far as you can see, only blocked by the occasional mountain poking up through the valley that is the city. You know you are getting close when the bus starts stopping.

This is traffic. And it is part of life in the city. The highways and roads that were meant to be the arteries and lifeblood of the city have taken to transporting poison and smog and are choking the city and its inhabitants to death. We sit, still, waiting for the next hiccup of movement to propel us slowly towards the city, knowing all the while, the further in we get, the harder it will be to get out again.

The tall apartment buildings, so functional, so utilitarian; I remind myself that they were built by human hands. The whole city was, but it has taken on a life of its own since then. Each brick paver in the myriad sidewalks, each tree, each road and bridge was painstakingly built to create the city from the old one, and it is now our home.

I will never know the whole city, it is far too large for that. I stay in my corner with the people and places I know. Occasionally, we venture further into the massive beast but mostly we stick to the well-traveled routes and summer homes we have created for ourselves.

I am struck by the thought that the city cares nothing for me, would not care or cease functioning if I disappeared tomorrow by way of death, abduction or transportation. Yet, like a lover scorned, I cannot turn away.

Dark garbi

It is amazing how complacent and set in their ways one can get even in a foreign country. After living here for one year, I had only seen one city outside of Seoul in Korea. This time, I have decided to branch out and turn imagination into reality in terms of traveling.

Towards this end, Richard and I set out for Chuncheon this weekend. Well, actually we had planned to go all the way to the East Sea but didn't leave early enough, misread the bus schedule, suddenly found ourselves not wanting to drive for 3.5 hours only arrive at night etc etc. So, we hopped a more frequent bus to a closer destination. Chuncheon is a smaller city about 1.5 hours east of Seoul, in a nice valley with a large lake that nobody inexplicably has homes near. We arrived at about 5:00pm, got our bearings over a cup of coffee and walked 2km to a hotel. For the cost, it was rather nice.

It didn't take long to get an understanding of the city, as it's quite small and could be walked if you don't mind 3km or so of walking. The city is famous for dalk galbi, which is a chicken stir-fry that was invented in Chuncheon. As a result, there is the dalk galbi street which is 20 some restaurants all claiming to be the first inventors. The idea of a restaurant street is a distinctly Korean phenomenon, what with their penchant for small businesses and the sheer numbers that seems to entail. We ate at one that had a bunch of TV recommendations (they all did actually) and impressed the woman when we suggested that ours was not spicy enough. When I inquired as to what kind of liquor the people next to us were having, the man overheard, called for a glass for us and poured us one. These people are amazing. It was pear wine, and it was delicious so we ordered a bottle for ourselves. I had been skeptical as to if the dalk galbi would really be better than it is in Seoul, and I am confident I was not led astray.

After dinner the first night, we headed towards the lake, which according to my map looked only a short distance away from the city center. We walked through a deserted American military base all fenced off and looking ominous as hell until coming to a road that ran parallel to the lake. We chose to go right because it looked like it intersected another road just a short way down that would go to the lake. Alas, that turned out to be just an alleyway into somebody's house so we continued down this road utterly and completely alone in the darkness. This was certainly NOT Seoul. After about 10 minutes of walking a few cars passing, we came to a street branching off towards the lake. There were plenty of well-lit stores going down this street, and there appeared to be a young woman in a bathing suit looking at herself in a mirror in the front of one of them. Confused, we turned left to see three scantily clad ladies sitting in chairs in more well-lit frontrooms. Something was amiss, we had stumbled into a red light district. Did this kind of thing exist in Korea? I knew prostitution was accepted here and even common by many measures but not in this sort of Amsterdam-ish throw it in your face kind of way. We turned around, scandalized and curious.

Walking all the way back the way we had come, still not seeing any people (except for the call girls) we finally found a road leading to the lake. We bought two beers at a convenience store and pushed onward down a street to the lake. Reaching the end of this street, we discovered a hill once again blocking our path. I could see a light of some sort on the hill, and knowing that there was a bike path along the lake, concluded this was in fact the lake. All the stood between us was green fence. We hopped it and FINALLY saw the lake. It literally took about two hours to make this happen. It was absolutely freezing. The wind blew in hard and we walked further along the lake. We came across a party ferry full of older Korean men and women dancing and singing along to Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing." The surrealness of that situation was not lost on us, either. As we stood on a bridge overlooking the pretty lake, it began to snow very lightly. The rarity of that in Korea was not lost on us.

Looping back through the city, we eventually walked all the way back to the hotel, putting us easily at over 10km for the day and all done in temperatures below freezing.

Waking today, we ate dalk galbi again for lunch. This time it was more garlicky and perhaps a little more delicious. We took a taxi to a ferry port and took a boat to a small island that is basically a large campground. We circumnavigated it and took the ferry home within an hour. We caught the bus back to Seoul. It feels good to be home.

Donkey-jawed diction

"Those who can't do, teach. But what about those who can't teach?"
-Unknown, September 2005.

These leaves fall fast on brick pavers loose under tire of bike and foot of man. These leaves, orangish yellow and crunchy to the touch, fall fast from the myriad gingko trees now stripped of stinking, overripe gingko nuts collected by elderly married women and their doting husbands, in tow. These leaves, like yellow horseshoes caught underneath the heavy weight of the air, twist and turn in a beautiful dance down to the recently painted bike path that edges the sidewalk. I twist, too, as they do.

It is fall in Seoul, and there is simply not a better season here. Winter, with its harsh Siberian wind and dearth of snow is simply painful and summer, with its excessive heat and humidity making one feel all the while that they are trapped somewhere between a high school locker room and the depths of Hell, have nothing to offer. Spring, brings with it condolences and green but lacks the thrilling pre-winter chills and breezes of autumn. These yellow leaves will only be in abundance for this short two month season until they are stripped away and replaced only by absence and heartbreak.

Yet, I ride home, unaware. Working up a sweat on my bike, my head fills with the haze of exercise. I come home, empty-handed and tired, to a humid, hot apartment that smells vaguely of a trash can that needs emptying. I open the window. Somewhere, a cat is in heat and is yelping and meowing through my window screen. The ridiculous and out of place dog that lives next door to me barks in response, as if echoing my own disdain towards the stupid feral cat.

With only one light on to cast shadows about my room, I lay in bed and ponder my present and future. What about my past? That old adversary, that troublesome wretch, that old unkillable bastard that so haunted me...what about it?

Leave those questions to the scholars and philosophers. I will trouble myself no more with them.

The playground, one year later

It's on a night like the one before, but at a different time in my life. After we get a drink, I suggest something I've done before, but something she has no idea about. We should go for a walk.

It was a little less than one year ago that I took this same walk with a different person. We roamed awkwardly through those apartments stumbling through conversations and learning about each other. This time, with a common language, I can learn more in one night than I did in 5 months before. But is this progress? Or just sensory overload?

We head through the same gate and up the same street. Cognizant of repeating myself, I steer us in a different destination and we sip our drinks as we swing.

My mind thinks back to asking if she believed in UFOs, and her asking me if I believed in ghosts. She actually mentioned that to me not too long ago. It's so hard to believe she even understood what I said half the time that the shock of her remembering really broke my heart when she said it. But regardless, we probably won't talk again.

This time, after swinging, we walk past the sidewalk and look down under the apartment buildings. There are dark crypts under each one, and with the weak light of our cellphones we don't dare enter. Both swearing to acquire flashlights and return, we press on to the next playground and climb the jungle gym. Again, I am astonished by how much ground we can cover talking in this language. There's no time to parse out anything, no time to bite my lip as I strain to make my point known, no mystery; I am talking with my twin.

We climb down off the dangerous apparatus and I take her to the original playground (of course she has no idea that this is what it in fact is); the one I went to one year ago. And I see the swings and weird slides and all the apartments looking down on us. But instead of swinging and talking about aliens and space, we see-saw and laugh with each other. Laughing is easy when you share a common language. We finish our beer and feel good and laugh. But I couldn't tell you what we talked about. I just know it wasn't aliens and space and ghosts. Why can't I remember?

We walk on to a grassy field that I didn't know about until more recently, behind this decrepit shopping center sort of thing but absolutely beautiful in its isolation. We lay on the wet grass, attacked by mosquitoes, but happy to lay together and look up at the few stars visible in the smog ridden night sky. I have come to find out she makes an excellent mosquito repellent; they seem far more drawn to her than me. We talk some more, and I strangely can't remember the content.

Then we depart, together, hand in hand (like before!) and into a world that is still uncertain. My feet are so happy to retrace their steps, but what do they want from the person walking next to them?

I heard the city is going to demolish those old apartments and put up newer, taller, shinier ones in their place. And people will then live and work and trample on the dust of the old playgrounds and my skeletons and memories in the name of progress.

We came back to have something

I weave, deftly, headphones pushed into my ears clogged with wax and music, past stray cats and parked cars and moving cars, barely squeaking past a taxi as it approaches my left side. I am here, and I am heading back to an isolated mosquito infested apartment in another neighborhood in another district in another time zone from my memories and my friends. I am here, and I am still happy, but I am stagnant.

Walking into my apartment, my nose is dripping from the cold. I quickly push my bike inside to avoid the mosquitoes who will most certainly try to infiltrate and destroy me while I sleep; they feed on my blood and breed in my shower drain, setting up some kind of microcosmic ecosystem they will possibly be able to sustain throughout the freezing winter and far past their normal life span. The sound of them buzzing in my ear as I sleep is almost as loud as as the wailing choir that follows me around "what now what now what now what now?" I yearn to answer, but I am as of yet unable to do so.

I curse my nose, and the headphone cable that gets caught around my neck as I try to loosen my scarf, and the door lock that won't shut without my prodding and the bike hitting my refrigerator as I barge in and myself for not doing something of interest tonight. Each night, could it be so precious, could it be so valuable that I would throw it away for so little? God, even the albums I am so familiar with sound so different tonight...

There is the past and there is the future, but what of the present? I have tried the past and it got me nowhere. I don't find much more solace in the future. So what about now? What will I find if I truly invest myself in what I am surrounded in? Will I be happy with what I find? Or is this haze all I have left? My brain aches at the thought of it. For now, sleep and the knowledge that maybe such questions can be pondered tomorrow is all there is.